By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 11, 2006

Metro is planning a series of round-the-clock track maintenance operations starting next month that would shut down service at certain rail stations for an entire weekend as part of an aggressive campaign to keep the nation's second-busiest transit system running safely and smoothly.

The blitz will be more disruptive than the current delays for weekend maintenance that involve the use of only one track. Those occur virtually every weekend.

In the long run, officials hope the shutdowns will reduce hassles for riders, because repairs will be completed in roughly 56 hours instead of in three-hour increments over 18 weekdays, said Steve A. Feil, Metro's chief operating officer for rail.

Between the shutdowns and the single-tracking weekends, the bottom line for Metro riders is not good: Expect delays every weekend through the end of the year.

"I'm here to tell you that almost every weekend from now through September -- barring any major events -- is going to be taken up by track work," Feil said.

Work for the last quarter of the year is still being scheduled, but chances are that 95 percent of the remaining weekends will be booked for rehabilitation as well, based on last year's experience. So far this year, Metro has performed maintenance every weekend, with the exception of the Cherry Blossom events of April 1-2 and 8-9.

Some riders, frustrated because there seems to be no end in sight to weekend track work, have stopped riding.

"I've completely given up on the Metro on weekends (esp. the Red Line) because of the single tracking," one rider wrote this month during an online discussion on http://washingtonpost.com . "It's just not worth the hassle. I can walk to my destination faster."

Metro officials are warning customers about major disruptions of Blue and Yellow line service this weekend. Trains will operate only every 20 minutes from 10 p.m. tomorrow through Sunday. All trains will operate with six cars.

Crews are replacing a switch at the Braddock Road Station on the southern end of the Blue and Yellow lines and concrete slabs between Stadium-Armory and Addison Road-Seat Pleasant on the northern end of the Blue Line.

Metro officials know riders are being inconvenienced.

"We are making every effort to minimize the customer delays," Feil said. But the size and complexity of the system requires aggressive maintenance "to stay ahead of the curve," he said. Aside from obvious safety concerns, the work is needed to keep trains running at normal speeds of 59 mph.

Metro has limited options when it comes to scheduling track maintenance. The weekend work is an inevitable result of increasing ridership and expanded service hours, officials said. On a typical weekday, Metro is running 1,538 trains over 206 miles of track. April's average weekday daily ridership was 739,525.

Over the years, Metro has lengthened its hours. It now operates from 5 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday. On Fridays and Saturdays, the trains run until 3 a.m.

That means that on a typical weekday, crews have "a narrow window" of 2 1/2 to three hours to perform labor-intensive chores, Feil said. Using only those time periods, excising a stretch of old rail, hoisting it off the track bed and replacing it with new steel could take 18 days to complete. Setup work takes time. Crews also have to be finished and out of the way by 4 a.m. so the system can open at 5 a.m.

Metro's design also limits the maintenance schedule. Unlike the New York subway, which has up to six tracks at some stations and can perform maintenance on two tracks while running service on others, Metro has only two tracks.

"We're doing some sort of maintenance all the time," Feil said, which often means one track is shut down.

To speed up maintenance, Metro plans to complete about a half-dozen intensive, round-the-clock operations before year's end, the most in recent history, Feil said. He is working on a schedule for specific locations and dates, he said. The Post plans to publish that information when it becomes available.

Such major rehabilitation projects tend to be scheduled for summer and fall. Track work becomes more difficult in the winter because the ground is hard. Last year, Metro shut down service for four weekends in July and August -- twice each on the Red and Orange lines -- for repair work on aerial structures.

This year, the first round-the-clock operation is scheduled for June 2-4 at the Stadium-Armory Station, while the Washington Nationals play out of town. The station will remain open during the track work, but both tracks will be closed. Free shuttle buses will ferry passengers between Stadium-Armory and Minnesota Avenue on the Orange Line and Benning Road on the Blue Line.

"We'll go out Friday night at 10 p.m., rip out the bad portion of the track and be back in service by Monday rush," Feil said. "We'll impact that location one time, and then you're done."